FML's Sports Correspondent

Today, I had to call the cops to break up a fistfight at my mother's funeral. It turns out my two brothers care more about having a pissing match over their favorite football teams than they do honoring our mother's memory. FML

You can tell from reading this story that we get a lot sport-related aggravation on FML. People take it seriously. Painting your face like a Juggalo and shouting at a man chasing a ball is a serious business. It’s something you either get or don’t get, and I don’t get it. I can see the appeal of wanting to belong to a team to glean some sort of self-validation and purpose in life when you’ve got nothing besides a tin of beans and a vague sense of national pride that your parents instilled in you like some sort of benign tumor, but once sport starts appearing as top stories on the news, it makes me feel like something is wrong. Charlie Brooker said, “Sport belongs in a news bulletin about as much as a mummified cat's head belongs in a Caesar salad.” However, I’m crap at sport. I’m unfit. I can’t catch things. I have the lung capacity of a clam. So I’m probably just jealous of all those lycra-clad gods and goddesses. So I just sit back and watch the stories float in here at FML towers about sporting mishaps, such as these:

Today, at a mixed-family game of rugby, my dad resorted to calling me a "goddamned accident" and eventually body-slamming me, just so I'd stop playing long enough for his team to score. FML

Whether during professional or amateur sports, most accidents are non-fatal. We’ve all seen chilling videos of those guys whose legs go off at funny angles. Just thinking about them makes my spine tingle. Or is that the massive caffeine-infused cola drink I had earlier? A diet cola drink of course, because I like to delude myself that I drinking something healthy to compensate for not doing any sports, or even taking the stairs for two floors when there’s a deathtrap horror-movie elevator. But sports can be hazardous if you think that people can die of embarrassment. There have been documented cases, but nobody wrote them down at the time.

Today, I finally scored a goal in a soccer game. Too bad it was in our own net. FML

As you know, most people take part in sports as spectators. That bit I could do. It involved minimum physical participation, unless you count yelling at the television with a beer and some processed food in your hand. But some spectators actually put on some clean-ish clothes, leave their homes and go to watch real-life sporting events take place before their very eyes. This can also be very tricky, especially if you’re not really good at using your hands, legs, and other body parts:

Today, I went to a baseball game. On the way in, I managed to trip and get stuck in the turnstile. It took five minutes of flailing and twisting around in front of hundreds of people before I managed to pull myself out. FML

Today, during a basketball game, I fell into metal chairs, which then decided to fold in, causing me to fall to the floor in a very dramatic and painful fall. When I stood up, so did everyone else and they were all clapping, including the other team. FML

And some things are just plain wrong. When weird people go out in public, get caught up in the excitement of a point being scored by someone on “their” team, they just do… something:

Today, I went to an amateur baseball game with some family and friends. When our team hit a home run, my grandpa took it upon himself to start screaming wildly, removing his prosthetic leg and waving it jubilantly in the air. FML

Many more sports stories are to be found in the annals of FML, you just have to use the squirrel-powered search engine to find them. The popularity of sports, whether football teams (real football, not that hand-egg thing that the Americans play) or individuals sports like tennis or listening to the world curling championship on the radio, will never wane. Meaning we’ll never run out of sports-related FMLs, where either face-painted spectators or people chasing odd-shaped balls get hurt. Bring ‘em on.

Chiara's illustrated FML

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Hello all you crybabies, from Land's End to John o' Groats. Yes, I'm finally here my lovelies. Since last week, my inbox hasn't stopped humming with the noise of new mail dropping into it, letters full…